Wednesday, April 2, 2014

William Berry 1610-1654

William
Berry was born in Norfolk, England, the son of Johan Berry. He was in
service to Captain John Mason in 1631, when Mason sent 58 men and 22
women to the Piscataqua River in North America.

The
following were returned as belonging to Sandy Beach in 1688: William Berry (his
son), John Berry (his son), John Marden, John Foss 1st, John Foss Jr., John
Odiorne, Anthony Brackett, Francis Ran, Thomas Ran, WIlliam Wallis, James
Randall, William Seavie, James Berry (his son), Samuel Ran, John Seavie,
Anthony Libbie, and Jos.

William
Berry married Jane Locke Hermins in 1636 in the town of Portsmouth, New
Hampshire. He signed the Glebe Conveyance in 1640. {S7}.
In 1640, only seventeen years after the first settling of Portsmouth, Francis
Williams, (the governor,) Ambrose Gibbins, William Jones, Renald Fernald, John
Crowther, Anthony Bracket, Michael Chatterton, Jno. Wall, Robert Puddington,
Matthew Coe, Henry Sherburn, John Lander, Henry Taler, Jno. Jones, William
Berry, Jno. Pickering, Jno. Billing, Jno. Wolten, Nicholas Row and William
Palmer, the principal inhabitants of Portsmouth, made a deed of fifty acres of
land in Portstmouth for a Glebe, or Parsonage.

He became
a freeman on 18 May 1642 in Newbury, Massachusetts and is on the list
of the first settlers of Newbury.

He
received a lot "upon the neck of land on the south side of the Little
River at Sandy Beach on January 31, 1648 that included the area where 'Locke's
Neck' is located.

Berry
served as a Selectman of Strawberry Bank (which is now Portsmouth,
New Hampshire) in 1646.

·Savage,
James A., A Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England, 1860- 1862., (Boston 1860-1862; rpt Baltimore
1955), [Savage], 1:171·The
Berrys by the beach : one of New Hampshire's first families / by Sylvia
Fitts Getchell.·New
England Marriages Prior to 1700,Charles Torrey,New England Historic and
Genealogy Society, Boston·Parsons,
Langdon B., History of the Town of Rye, NH From Its Discovery and Settlement to
December 31, 1903, (1905; repr. Bowie, MD: Heritage Press 1992), [RyeHist],
269.·Brewster,
Charles W., The Selling of the Land, ~186·http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Berry_(pioneer)

Freeman in Colonial Times

Black's Law
Dictionary(9th
edition) defines Freeman as 1. A person who possesses and enjoys all thecivil
and political rightsbelonging
to the people under a free government. 2. A person who is not a slave. 3. Hist.
A member of a municipal corporation (a city or a borough) who possesses full
civic rights, esp. the right to vote. 4. Hist. A freeholder. Cf. VILLEIN. 5.
Hist. An allodial landowner. Cf. VASSAL. - also written free man.[2]

"Freedom" was earned after
an allotted time, or until the person demanding "payment" was
satisfied – this was known asindentured servitude, and was not originally intended as a stigma or
embarrassment for the person involved since many of the sons and daughters of
the wealthy and famous of the time found themselves forced into such temporary
servitude.

Anindentured servantwould sign a contract agreeing to serve for a
specific number of years, typically five or seven. Many immigrants to the
colonies came as indentured servants, with someone else paying their passage to
the Colonies in return for a promise of service. At the end of his service,
according to the contract, the indentured servant (male or female) usually
would be granted a sum of money, a new suit of clothes, land, or perhaps
passage back to England. An indentured servant was not the same as an
apprentice or a child who was "placed out."

Once a man was made a freeman,
and was no longer considered acommon, he
could, and usually would, become a member of the church, and he could own land.
The amount of land he was able to own was sometimes determined by how many
members there were in his family. As a freeman, he became a member of the
governing body, which met in annual or semiannual meetings (town meetings) to make and enforce laws and pass judgment in civil and
criminal matters. As the colonies grew these meetings became impractical and a
representativebicameralsystem was developed. Freeman would choosedeputy governorswho made up theupper houseof theGeneral
Courtandassistant governors, thelower house, who chose the governor from among their ranks, and who
passed judgments in civil and criminal matters. To hold one of these offices it
was required, of course, for one to be a freeman. Thus, the enfranchised voters
and office holders were landholding male church members. Women, Native
Americans and other non-Puritans were not made freeman.

Initially, any male first
entering into a colony, or just recently having become a member of one of the
local churches, was formally notfree. They
were considered common. Such persons were never forced to work for another
individual, per se, but their movements were carefully observed, and if they
veered from the Puritanical ideal, they were asked toleave the colony. If they
stayed or later returned to the colony, they were occasionally put to death.

There was an unstatedprobationary periodthat the prospective "freeman"
needed to go through, and if he did pass this probationary period of time –
usually one to two years – he was allowed his freedom.

A Freeman was said to be free of
all debt, owing nothing to anyone except God Himself.